When Dr. Baugh Breaks

Or

Ride, Boldly Ride

Robert Golden “R.G.” Armstrong, best remembered as rancher Kevin MacDonald, whose battle with Bart Jason over water rights set in motion the events in El Dorado, my favorite John Wayne movie, has died at the age of 95. The veteran character actor appeared in more than 180 movies and TV shows over the course of his 40-year career, including dozens of westerns, many directed by Sam Peckinpah. After drawing praise as Dr. Baugh, who cut through the crap and gave Big Daddy an honest diagnosis and a way out amidst the squabbling in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, the broad-shouldered, gruff-drawling Armstrong found work in virtually every TV Western of the 1950s and 1960s. During this period, he met the up-and-coming Peckinpah, who cast him, generally as a deranged religious fanatic relying on the Bible and a shotgun in equal measure, in film such as Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Ride the High Country and Major Dundee. Later roles were more horror based, including the back-stabbing and back-stabbed Diehl in Children of the Corn, Uncle Lewis Vendredi in Friday the 13th: the Series, the head-spinning bugger-happy caretaker in Evilspeak, and the Old Man on Millennium and the Enter Sandman video by Metallica.